Book Review: Tin Mining in Cornwall 1900-1950: Decline, Fall and Resurrection

The history of tin and (copper) mining in Cornwall has focussed largely on the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the industry’s twentieth century fortunes treated often as something of an after-thought, in effect the long aftermath of Cornwall’s fall from grace in the 1860s and 1870s. Cyril Noall’s volumes on Levant and Geevor mines, together with Allen Buckley on South Crofty and D. Bradford Barton’s wider study of the Cornish tin mining and smelting industry, provide important corrective insights into the Cornish experience in the twentieth century. Yet none has provided a comprehensive overview of what turns out to be an important and illuminating period in the industry’s history. Now, however, this significant gap in the literature is filled admirably by Roger Burt, who charts the surprisingly complex story of tin mining in Cornwall from 1900 to 1950...